Your salon is your passion project – you hire the best stylists, use top-of-the-line products, and stay up to date on the latest styles and techniques. To reap the rewards of all that hard work, make sure your marketing goes beyond word-of-mouth referrals.

Marketing a salon: Why digital tools are crucial

In an era where shoppers turn to online platforms for recommendations and bookings, it’s vital to have a sound digital marketing strategy – it can make a difference to your salon’s bottom line. Here are some benefits to using salon marketing tools effectively:

• Boost brand visibility
• Attract and retain clients
• Optimize appointment scheduling
• Improve customer engagement
• Enhance the guest experience

So what does it take to effectively market a salon? It means thinking through a strategy, identifying tactics that will resonate with your target audience, and designing attractive materials to give life to those tactics.

To help your salon stand out and drive business growth, here’s an array of digital marketing tools to choose from. Whether you're looking to improve your online presence or attract new clients, this comprehensive guide covers free and paid tools to help with your salon marketing efforts.

The top free and paid salon marketing tools

The following tools help with the different components of marketing a salon.

Content creation tools

Your content represents your brand, so it’s worth investing in professional design services. As a fallback, the following salon marketing tools can help you create professional-looking designs.

Canva (free and paid)

A user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and extensive library of templates make Canva a breeze to use. Take on marketing campaigns with confidence to create attractive visuals for social media posts, flyers, and more.

Adobe Express (free and paid)

With Adobe Express, you can create a web page, social media posts, ads, and flyers. It even includes a logo maker and content scheduler, making it one of the more versatile salon marketing tools.

Animoto (paid)

Easy and intuitive to use, Animoto helps you produce high-quality videos for your marketing campaigns. Create captivating clips with the drag-and-drop interface and customizable templates.

Social media management tools

This section covers salon marketing tools that help you manage and track your social media posts.

Hootsuite (free and paid)

With Hootsuite, you can schedule posts, track your social media channels, and analyze performance. The user-friendly interface lets you manage multiple accounts with ease to ensure your salon stays top of mind for your followers.

Buffer (free and paid)

Another option for scheduling social media posts, Buffer offers an intuitive analytics feature for insight into the best times to post, helping you better engage with your audience across various platforms.

Later (free and paid)

This Instagram-friendly platform is ideal for salons that rely heavily on visual content. Easily plan and schedule posts, curate user-generated content, and analyze performance metrics to refine your strategy.

Email marketing tools

Here are a few salon marketing tools for a channel that beauty and wellness businesses don’t tap as much as they should – email.

Mailchimp (free and paid)

This email marketing platform offers a range of features, including customizable templates, automation, and detailed analytics. Use it to send promotional offers, appointment reminders, and newsletters to keep your clients informed and engaged.

Constant Contact (paid)

Among the more robust salon marketing tools for email, Constant Contact is a good option when your business outgrows the free options available. It offers easy-to-use templates and advanced segmentation. You can also automate personalized messages based on client behavior.  

Brevo (free and paid)

With a drag-and-drop builder and automation features, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) simplifies the process of creating and managing campaigns, making it a versatile tool for marketing a salon.

Website and search engine optimization (SEO) tools

While complementary to the core marketing function, creating and optimizing your website is a must for your online presence and business success.

WordPress (free and paid)

Create a professional website for your salon – no coding knowledge needed. WordPress offers a plethora of plugins and themes to help you customize your site and showcase your brand in the best possible way.

Yoast SEO (free and paid)

A plugin that works with WordPress, Yoast helps optimize your website for search engines, helping your content rank higher for keywords you choose to attract more business.

Wix (free and paid)

With Wix’s intuitive website builder including customizable templates, salon owners can create a polished online presence quickly. The platform comes with SEO tools built in to boost site visibility on search engines.

Analytics and reporting tools

These applications support the marketing function by helping you track results and adjust your efforts.

Google Analytics (free)

Check salon website performance using this free tool. Delve into user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion rates to optimize your marketing efforts and improve your online presence.  

Google Analytics 360 is a paid option with advanced capabilities for large businesses.

SEMrush (free and paid)

A comprehensive SEO and digital marketing tool, SEMRush offers features like keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audits. With its analytics capabilities, you can identify opportunities to improve your salon’s online visibility.

Hotjar (free and paid)

Get insight into user behavior on your website through heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls. Understanding how visitors interact with your site allows you to fine-tune it.

Reputation management tools

These tools are a key counterpart to your other salon marketing tools. Why is reputation management so important? 90% of customers want a minimum rating of 4 out of 5 before they’ll consider a salon.

Yelp for Business (free and paid)

Claim and optimize your Yelp business profile to manage reviews, respond to customer feedback, and attract new clients. You can easily update salon information, respond to reviews, and add photos to showcase your salon.

Google Reviews (free)
Encourage satisfied clients to leave positive feedback, respond promptly to all reviews, and address concerns professionally. When you do this consistently, you build trust and highlight your commitment to client satisfaction.

Paid advertising tools

Here are three cost-effective salon marketing tools to consider.

Google Ads (paid)

Run targeted advertising campaigns by bidding on keywords that set your salon apart. Google surfaces paid ads when searchers look for the keywords specified.

Facebook Ads (paid)

Create fine-tuned ad campaigns based on audience demographics, interests, and behaviors. The platform’s reporting features help you track your salon marketing campaigns so you can adjust them as you go.

Instagram Ads (paid)

Reach your audience with visually appealing content, a must for salons to show off their beautiful interiors and their stylists’ best work. Instagram offers advanced targeting options and engagement features.

Time-saving tip: Easily cross-post from Instagram to Facebook. This way you can appeal to customer groups that favor either platform without doubling your work. Simply follow these steps. You can even exclude individual posts and stories from cross-posting if you wish.

Influencer marketing tools

‍Of all the types of salon marketing tools this post covers, the following set is relatively new, even if the concept of  influencer marketing goes back centuries.

Aspire (paid)

This platform connects brands with influencers, offering features like influencer discovery, campaign management, and performance tracking, helping you build successful partnerships.

Upfluence (paid)

Identify and collaborate with influencers in your niche. The data-driven approach in Upfluence ensures you partner with creators who align with your salon brand and can drive meaningful results.

Traackr (paid)

With features like influencer discovery, relationship management, and campaign analytics, Traackr helps you take a strategic approach to build and manage influencer partnerships.

Salon marketing tools in Zenoti software

Trusted by nearly 30,000 businesses around the world, the Zenoti platform includes tools that make salon marketing easier.

First, consider the ability to create personalized marketing campaigns in just minutes. Zenoti's analytics capabilities assess your guests' preferences to create highly tailored campaigns. This micro-segmentation supports campaigns based on purchase history, helping attract guests with offers that truly matter to them.  

In addition, campaigns based on visit history help you target customers who haven’t booked an appointment in a while. This allows you to send personalized offers and promotions that motivate them to return, boosting customer retention.

What impact can the right salon marketing tools have? See how The Waxing Studio brought back hundreds of guests with automated marketing.

“Having a solution that enables us to specifically target guests based on how long it has been since their last appointment has been fantastic. With Zenoti, we’ve not only increased revenue by bringing them back but these guests are actually spending 3% more than other guests.”

– Ken Main, Commercial Director, Ellen Conlin Hair & Beauty

How Zenoti marketing tools help salons provide a polished guest experience

Every customer gets a single profile across all your stores in the Zenoti platform, helping you access relevant information at every point of the customer journey. Customers have a better experience too – they get brand consistency across your salon chain, whether it’s two salons or 200.

“Marketing in Zenoti gives us the ability to build campaigns and reach our consumers in a very personalized way. We are seeing a higher percentage of conversions from the time they hit our site to actually booking an appointment."

– Dave Mortensen, Co-founder & President, Waxing the City

Once your marketing messages are out, Zenoti also simplifies the process of securing appointments. From automatically nudging salon customers about incomplete bookings and sending reminders for confirmed ones, Zenoti helps keep your appointment book full without manual intervention. Reaching out to a prospective guest isn’t left to chance or added to already-long to-do lists for staff. The platform does it for you.

Moreover, the salon digital marketing system from Zenoti helps you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), including sales, conversions, and marketing campaign results.

"Our clients have been used to us doing a back-to-school leader sale. With Zenoti, not only could we put it out to our entire client base, but we've also been able to target people who have participated in those sales in previous years, and we've actually seen an increase year over year."

– Julie Schumacher, Owner, Rumors Salon

Marketing tools that drive sales 24x7

Complementing a business’s marketing efforts, Zenoti offers the ability to upsell and add on services and products automatically via your mobile app and online store. Here, the mobile app and web store serve as your silent salon marketing tools, closing sales round the clock.  

How this works: When customers book appointments or buy retail products online, Zenoti automatically suggests add-ons for products and services they are likely to buy based on the contents of their online shopping cart. The impact to your bottom line is tangible: Invoice totals get a healthy boost before customers even enter your salon for their service.

The combination of personalized marketing, automated scheduling, online upsells and add-on sales, and analytics found in Zenoti can all help maximize your salon's growth and profitability.

Think beyond salon marketing tools

In the digital age, marketing a salon calls for a strategic approach and the right tools. By using the free and paid options listed above, you can add sparkle to your salon’s online presence, attract new clients, and keep customers coming back.  

Don’t bank entirely on digital tools to market your salon, however. The authenticity and uniqueness of your brand matter more. To that end, focus on creating engaging content, collecting and sharing customer testimonials, and encouraging real-time interactions to build client trust and loyalty.  

Be sure to prioritize social media marketing as platforms like Instagram and Pinterest can turn your salon’s styling masterpieces into viral sensations, driving organic traffic and engagement.

Incorporating email marketing into your strategy can also yield impressive results. Regular newsletters and personalized offers can keep your clientele informed and excited about upcoming promotions, new services, and even helpful beauty tips.

With everything it takes to properly market your salon, it’s easy to become so focused on your business that you forget the world outside. The antidote: Network within the beauty and wellness community, attend industry events, and partner with influencers to further amplify your marketing efforts.

Remember, the key to effective marketing is consistency and adaptability. Keep up with style and industry trends to refine your marketing strategy as you go. With a thought-out plan and the right salon marketing software, you can effectively showcase what’s best about your business to attract more customers to your salon.

Discover the power of Zenoti salon marketing tools to run personalized, automated campaigns.